Central Asia’s Vast Biofuel Opportunity

The current discoveries of a International Energy Administration whistleblower that the IEA may have distorted key oil projections under intense U.S. pressure is, if true (and whistleblowers rarely come forward to advance their professions), a slow-burning atomic surge on future global oil production. The Bush administration’s actions in pressuring the IEA to underplay the rate of decrease from existing oil fields while overplaying the opportunities of discovering new reserves have the prospective to toss governments’ long-lasting preparation into turmoil.

Whatever the truth, rising long term international needs seem particular to overtake production in the next decade, particularly provided the high and rising expenses of establishing brand-new super-fields such as Kazakhstan’s overseas Kashagan and Brazil’s southern Atlantic Jupiter and Carioca fields, which will require billions in financial investments before their very first barrels of oil are produced.

In such a scenario, ingredients and substitutes such as biofuels will play an ever-increasing role by extending beleaguered production quotas. As market forces and increasing costs drive this innovation to the leading edge, among the wealthiest potential production areas has actually been totally ignored by investors already – Central Asia. Formerly the USSR’s cotton “plantation,” the area is poised to become a significant player in the production of biofuels if adequate foreign financial investment can be obtained. Unlike Brazil, where biofuel is produced mainly from sugarcane, or the United States, where it is mostly distilled from corn, Central Asia’s ace resource is a native plant, Camelina sativa.

Of the previous Soviet Caucasian and Central Asian republics, those clustered around the coasts of the Caspian, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have seen their economies boom because of record-high energy prices, while Turkmenistan is waiting in the wings as a rising manufacturer of natural gas.

Farther to the east, in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, geographical isolation and fairly scant hydrocarbon resources relative to their Western Caspian neighbors have mostly inhibited their capability to capitalize increasing worldwide energy already. Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan remain mainly dependent for their electrical needs on their Soviet-era hydroelectric facilities, however their increased need to produce winter electrical power has actually led to autumnal and winter season water discharges, in turn significantly affecting the farming of their western downstream neighbors Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

What these three downstream countries do have nevertheless is a Soviet-era tradition of farming production, which in Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan case was mainly directed towards cotton production, while Kazakhstan, beginning in the 1950s with Khrushchev’s “Virgin Lands” programs, has become a significant manufacturer of wheat. Based upon my discussions with Central Asian government officials, given the thirsty needs of cotton monoculture, foreign propositions to diversify agrarian production towards biofuel would have great appeal in Astana, Ashgabat and Tashkent and to a lower extent Astana for those durable investors ready to wager on the future, specifically as a plant native to the region has actually currently shown itself in trials.

Known in the West as false flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina is attracting increased scientific interest for its oleaginous qualities, with a number of European and American business already examining how to produce it in industrial quantities for biofuel. In January Japan Airlines carried out a historical test flight using camelina-based bio-jet fuel, becoming the very first Asian provider to explore flying on fuel obtained from sustainable feedstocks throughout a one-hour presentation flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The test was the culmination of a 12-month evaluation of camelina’s functional efficiency ability and possible industrial practicality.

As an alternative energy source, camelina has much to advise it. It has a high oil content low in saturated fat. In contrast to Central Asia’s thirsty “king cotton,” camelina is drought-resistant and immune to spring freezing, needs less fertilizer and herbicides, and can be utilized as a rotation crop with wheat, which would make it of specific interest in Kazakhstan, now Central Asia’s significant wheat exporter. Another bonus offer of camelina is its tolerance of poorer, less fertile conditions. An acre sown with camelina can produce as much as 100 gallons of oil and when planted in rotation with wheat, camelina can increase wheat production by 15 percent. A lot (1000 kg) of camelina will consist of 350 kg of oil, of which pressing can draw out 250 kg. Nothing in camelina production is lost as after processing, the plant’s particles can be utilized for livestock silage. Camelina silage has an especially appealing concentration of omega-3 fatty acids that make it an especially great animals feed candidate that is recently getting acknowledgment in the U.S. and Canada. Camelina is quick growing, produces its own natural herbicide (allelopathy) and competes well against weeds when an even crop is developed. According to Britain’s Bangor University’s Centre for Alternative Land Use, “Camelina could be a perfect low-input crop suitable for bio-diesel production, due to its lower requirements for nitrogen fertilizer than oilseed rape.”

Camelina, a branch of the mustard household, is native to both Europe and Central Asia and barely a new crop on the scene: historical proof shows it has been cultivated in Europe for at least three millennia to produce both grease and animal fodder.

Field trials of production in Montana, presently the center of U.S. camelina research study, showed a large range of outcomes of 330-1,700 lbs of seed per acre, with oil material varying in between 29 and 40%. Optimal seeding rates have actually been identified to be in the 6-8 lb per acre range, as the seeds’ small size of 400,000 seeds per lb can produce problems in germination to accomplish an optimum plant density of around 9 plants per sq. ft.

Camelina’s potential could permit Uzbekistan to begin breaking out of its most dolorous legacy, the imposition of a cotton monoculture that has deformed the nation’s attempts at agrarian reform given that accomplishing self-reliance in 1991. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Russian federal government identified that Central Asia would become its cotton plantation to feed Moscow’s growing textile market. The process was sped up under the Soviets. While Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were also ordered by Moscow to plant cotton, Uzbekistan in particular was singled out to produce “white gold.”

By the end of the 1930s the Soviet Union had actually ended up being self-sufficient in cotton; five decades later it had actually ended up being a major exporter of cotton, producing more than one-fifth of the world’s production, concentrated in Uzbekistan, which produced 70 percent of the Soviet Union’s output.

Try as it might to diversify, in the absence of alternatives Tashkent remains wedded to cotton, producing about 3.6 million lots annually, which generates more than $1 billion while making up around 60 percent of the country’s hard cash earnings.

Beginning in the mid-1960s the Soviet government’s regulations for Central Asian cotton production mainly bankrupted the area’s scarcest resource, water. Cotton utilizes about 3.5 acre feet of water per acre of plants, leading Soviet planners to divert ever-increasing volumes of water from the area’s two main rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, into ineffective irrigation canals, resulting in the remarkable shrinking of the rivers’ final location, the Aral Sea. The Aral, once the world’s fourth-largest inland sea with a location of 26,000 square miles, has diminished to one-quarter its initial size in among the 20th century’s worst environmental disasters.

And now, the dollars and cents. Dr. Bill Schillinger at Washington State University just recently described camelina’s service design to Capital Press as: “At 1,400 pounds per acre at 16 cents a pound, camelina would generate $224 per acre; 28-bushel white wheat at $8.23 per bushel would amass $230.”

Central Asia has the land, the farms, the irrigation infrastructure and a modest wage scale in contrast to America or Europe – all that’s missing out on is the foreign financial investment. U.S. investors have the cash and access to the competence of America’s land grant universities. What is certain is that biofuel‘s market share will grow over time; less particular is who will profit of developing it as a feasible concern in Central Asia.

If the current past is anything to pass it is not likely to be American and European investors, focused as they are on Caspian oil and gas.

But while the Japanese flight experiments indicate Asian interest, American investors have the academic expertise, if they want to follow the Silk Road into developing a brand-new market. Certainly anything that minimizes water use and pesticides, diversifies crop production and enhances the lot of their agrarian population will get most cautious factor to consider from Central Asia’s federal governments, and farming and grease processing plants are not only much less expensive than pipelines, they can be constructed faster.

And jatropha curcas‘s biofuel capacity? Another story for another time.